Business this week

The euro-zone crisis resurfaced amid worries that Spain will be unable to keep its public finances under control and will require a bail-out at some point. The government announced further cuts to health and education budgets, and denied that a rescue would be necessary. The yield on Spanish ten-year government bonds rose to almost 6%, the highest since the European Central Bank's first provision of cheap funding for banks in December, which had helped to calm bond markets. See article

A familiar feeling

Italy also had to pay more to finance its debt this week. Investors turned to German Bunds, pushing the yield on ten-year German debt down to 1.77%, the lowest ever.

The Swiss National Bank described the first breach of its minimum exchange rate of SFr1.20 against the euro as a technical matter that took place in a “segmented” banking market, and reiterated that it is “prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities” to ensure the currency's stability. The central bank set the cap in September, when investors seeking a haven from the euro zone's turmoil flocked to the currency.

The share prices of India's debt-laden airlines rose amid reports that the government is considering whether to allow foreign airlines to buy stakes in them of up to 49%. Such a move would provide much-needed cash to former high-flyers such as Kingfisher Airlines, which has had to reduce the number of routes it operates over the past year as it struggles with financing.

BrightSourceEnergy, which is developing the Ivanpah solar-power system in California's Mohave Desert, withdrew its planned IPO at the last moment, because of “adverse market conditions”. Earlier this month Solar Trust of America, which is developing another huge solar-energy project, at Blythe in southern California, filed for bankruptcy protection after its German majority-owner went bust in December.

Brains distrust

It emerged that India is in “consultations” with America at the World Trade Organisation, the last stage before a legal dispute, about America's new rules for work visas for employees of Indian IT firms. The cost of a skilled-worker visa almost doubled, to $4,500, under the rules.

Sony said it would shed 10,000 jobs worldwide in yet another restructuring of its operations. The Japanese group also doubled its forecast of a loss for the year ending March 31st to {Yen}520 billion ($6.4 billion), as it can no longer count tax credits in America as assets because of its unprofitable business there. Kazuo Hirai took over from Howard Stringer as Sony's boss on April 1st and has warned of “painful choices” ahead as it responds to Korean and Taiwanese competition. See article

Yahoo! also unveiled a big restructuring that will result in 2,000 job cuts, the most in its 17-year existence. Scott Thompson, the new chief executive, is decentralising the company's commerce-development unit in an effort to give staff more scope to come up with ideas for selling stuff through Yahoo!'s websites.

Facebook made its biggest acquisition to date by buying Instagram, a photo-sharing app, for $1 billion. Instagram is barely two years old but the number of people who use it has nearly doubled since December, to 30m, and it is set to grow rapidly with a new app for Google's Android. See article

Nokia issued another dire profit warning, citing “competitive industry dynamics”, or poor sales, in big emerging markets, such as India. Nokia, a casualty of the rise of Apple and Android, this week launched its new Lumia 900 smartphone in America, only to notify users about a bug that can shut down the device's internet connection. A fix will be available on April 16th.

America's Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Apple and five big publishers for allegedly colluding to keep the price of e-books artificially high to counteract Amazon's practice of selling books for $9.99 on the Kindle. Three of the publishers agreed to settle. See article

Worth a trillion by September?

Apple's market capitalisation rose (briefly) above $600 billion on April 10th, just 28 trading days after it reached $500 billion. Microsoft was worth just a little over $600 billion in 1999 (at 1999 prices) shortly before the dotcom bubble burst.

After a lengthy search Avon appointed Sheri McCoy as its new chief executive to replace Andrea Jung, who has been in the job since 1999. Ms McCoy is leaving Johnson & Johnson to join the beauty-products company, which sells its wares through 6.4m “Avon ladies” around the world. She was appointed soon after the company rejected a takeover approach from Coty, a perfume supplier which thinks Avon could do with a makeover.